


Cryptonym

by theLiterator



Series: Nikolai (Male!Natasha) verse [3]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, F/M, Gen, Genderswap, always-a-boy!Natasha, always-a-girl!Tony, the meaning of names
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-14
Updated: 2014-03-14
Packaged: 2018-01-15 17:39:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1313539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theLiterator/pseuds/theLiterator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pet names and mechanical brilliance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cryptonym

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gehayi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gehayi/gifts).



> This was a response to this prompt: http://fic-promptly.dreamwidth.org/232697.html?thread=9373945#cmt9373945 over at fic_promptly.

The first time she calls him Nikolya, he doesn’t even notice, because she’s dropped it into the middle of a speed-of-light explanation of the new access restrictions she’s put in place for her JARVIS mainframe. (Even SHIELD has no idea where she keeps JARVIS’s soul. His brains and his guts are strewn across the US in various data centers both Stark-owned and not, but his source code…)

The second time, she is bailing him out of jail in a town halfway between Colorado and Kansas and he is too occupied with running away to say a word, but he notices, and he wonders what it means.

“Nikolya, my blueberry muffin of desire, come find my 5/8 wrench for me,” she said around a mouthful of wires.

He stared at her shoulder, the slight curl to her hair, the smudge of grease on her cheek. “That,” he said, “isn’t my name.”

“You don’t like blueberry muffins?” she asked him. He set a metric wrench that would work right next to her hand and she flashed him a glance that might have held genuine emotion had it lasted longer than an eyeblink, and grabbed it. She used her free hand to lever herself up and twisted at an angle that should have been painful but apparently wasn’t.

“Nikolya.”

She spat out the wires, set down the wrench, and disentangled herself from her brilliant mechanical mess to give him her full regard.

“I have a question, sweetheart,” she said, and it came out low and soft the way so little did from her. He let her keep eye contact, because both of them had perfected that weapon, the art of dazzling attention and too-much focus. “How many names do you have?”

He settled back on his heels, sank his weight down so he was truly relaxed and not about to flee with a conscious force of will. Tony might terrify him, but he would _not_ flee from her. He had made that commitment in Colorado.

“I…” He had many. Too many, perhaps. “More than I can remember,” he admitted despite himself.

“So the way I see it, there’s a couple of types of names. You’ve got your standard birth names, which are great for most people,” and hers echoed in between them here, beneath her words like a ghost of shared pain: _Antonia Maria Stark_. “And then there are the other names. The names you are given by those who love you are great, because it means people love you. And a lot of people have those too. You and I are different, because we never had that. 

“We have been given names, but never by people who loved us,” she said, standing up and stepping closer. “ _Nikolai_ ,” she whispered, or maybe it slipped underneath unspoken as well.

“And we have taken names,” her hand was on his chest, and his heart wasn’t beating any faster than it should because he had more control over that, but—

Iron Man. Captain America. Wolf Spider. Hawkeye.

Tony Stark.

All of them seized with blood and pain and sacrifice. _All of them_.

“But we have never been given names, have we, _Nikolya_?”

He smiled at her and she smiled back, the intensity draining as quickly as it came on.

Once she was back in among her mechanical brilliance, he murmured, soft enough she could pretend not to hear, “I once gave a man the name Yasha, where he had none.”

She grunted with the effort of tightening a bolt and said. “And what did he name you?”

Nikolai had no answer.


End file.
